My goal is to inform potential law school students and applicants of the ugly realities of attending law school. DO NOT ATTEND UNLESS: (1) YOU GET INTO A TOP 8 LAW SCHOOL ON SCHOLARSHIP; (2) YOU GET A FULL-TUITION SCHOLARSHIP TO ATTEND; (3) YOU HAVE EMPLOYMENT AS AN ATTORNEY SECURED THROUGH A RELATIVE OR CLOSE FRIEND; OR (4) YOU ARE FULLY AWARE BEFOREHAND THAT YOUR HUGE INVESTMENT IN TIME, ENERGY, AND MONEY DOES NOT, IN ANY WAY, GUARANTEE A JOB AS AN ATTORNEY OR IN THE LEGAL INDUSTRY.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

ABA-Accredited Law Schools "Unintentionally" Published False Data on Average Law Student Indebtedness

On August 9, 2012, the ABA Journal published a piece from Mark Hansen, under the headline “Law Schools That Misreported Student Debt Figures to ABA, US News Are Identified.” Look at this opening:

“We now know the names of three of the law schools that misreported average student debt figures to the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar and to U.S. News & World Report.

The three schools—identified in this Wall Street Journal Law Blog posting—are Barry University School of Law in Orlando, Fla.; the University of Kansas School of Law; and Rutgers School of Law-Camden.

All three schools say the misreported figures were an honest mistake. And section officials say they have no reason to think otherwise.

Barry originally reported an average student debt load for the class of 2011 of $41,190, earning it a place in U.S. News' list of the top 10 law schools whose students have the least amount of student debt. The correct figure, Barry now says, $137,680.

The University of Kansas School of Law had originally reported an average indebtedness for 2011 graduates of nearly $42,000. The actual figure, the school now says, is $67,598.

Rutgers School of Law-Camden originally reported an average debt figure of $27,423. The correct number, the school says, is $80,446.” [Emphasis mine]

As I have noted before on this blog, isn’t it uncanny how these supposed “errors” ALWAYS benefit the perpetrators, i.e. "educators"?!?! Law schools pad the LSAT scores and UGPAs of incoming students. These diploma mills also GROSSLY OVERSTATE the number of grads working in federal clerkships. ABA-accredited trash pits even manage to embellish the average starting salary of recent JDs - while misrepresenting their “placement” rates.

How often do you see ABA schools report lower LSAT scores of entering classes - or provide job placement figures that actually understate the nine month employment rate?! Of course, the ball-less pieces of trash at the American Bar Association ostensibly believe that these are “honest mistakes.” Hell, I’m sure many of these dolts and waterheads feel that Bernard Madoff accidentally stole billions from investors.

Check out this entry from Paul Campos, published this morning, with the apt title “Character and Fitness.” The piece focuses on law schools furnishing FALSE DATA to the NALP and US “News” & World Report - as it pertains to average law student debt of recent graduates. To be fair, Campos has posted several pieces on this subject lately. Thank you for exposing these bastards, Paul.

“It will be interesting to see what the final law school loan totals look like if and when US News gets around to updating its website (the ABA doesn't publish this data, but its estimate that public law school grads took out loan averages of $75K obviously needs to be revised upwards).

Other schools whose average graduate law school loan totals almost certainly are going to end up being multiplied by roughly three: Georgia State, Southern, Texas Southern, and one I haven't mentioned before, Drexel.”

These schools published average student debt figures that are SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER than the real numbers. Some of these commodes did so for several years.
Here is another biting excerpt from Campos:

“Rutgers-Camden and Drexel have done the same thing [misreporting average student debt figures] for at least three straight years, but the ABA (which actually means John O'Brien, et. al.) has already said it's going to take no action against any of these schools, since "sanctions are reserved for schools that make 'persistent and substantial misrepresentations,'" and apparently reporting egregiously fake data to the ABA for at least three straight years doesn't count.

BTW for all you law students and applicants out there, don't think for a moment this means you can "forget" to mention that minor in possession citation you got three years ago. You can be sure your character and what it reveals about your fitness for bar membership will continue to receive the most scrupulous attention from John O'Brien et. al.” [Emphasis mine]

On August 8, 2012, Chelsea Phipps posted an entry on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog labeled “Reports of Our (Low) Debt Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.” Here is a key passage:

“Amy M. Lefkowitz, associate dean for student affairs at Barry Law School, said the error was unintentional. Ms. Lefkowitz said that the school alerted the ABA to the error, but that it hadn’t contacted U.S. News to request a correction.”

What a beacon of integrity, right?!?! Yeah, sure the lie was unintentional - and I just threw a no hitter against the Yankees.

Conclusion: The American Bar Association is a cartel. These pigs are not significantly different from most other criminal enterprises. When they catch their members in the act of stealing from the public and their customers/students, they refuse to punish the rats. Keep in mind that ABA-accredited schools KNOWINGLY PROVIDED FALSE DATA - in a cynical attempt to sell themselves to prospective students. These are not “errors.” Average indebtedness for a graduating class would include cumulative debt incurred while enrolled in law school; it would not be limited to one year of "legal education." If you believe that SEVERAL law schools committed the same honest mistake during the same time frame, then you truly are a lost cause. If the schools are this incompetent, then they ought to be shut down. These debt figures represent broken financial futures. At such levels, how many of these JDs and lawyers will be precluded from purchasing a home or starting a family? Of course, the ABA pigs and “law professors” don’t give a damn. After all, they are paid very handsomely for minimal “work.” The fact that the commodes furnished false average law student indebtedness SHOWS CONCLUSIVELY that the schools are willing to screw their recent graduates further, for their own institutional and personal gain.

The ABA (i.e., the cabal of TTT law school deans that comprise it) and the law school cartel enjoy a double standard that criminal masterminds such as Al Capone and Bernie Madoff would envy. The ABA and the law schools are immune from criminal prosecution despite their blatant conspiracy to collude and defraud lawyers and law students.

As was demonstrated, law schools can lie upward (e.g., exaggerate LSAT/GPA profiles, employment rates, starting salaries, etc.) or downward (e.g., downplay student debt numbers) whenever they see fit and when caught, claim ignorance or mistake. They teach you in law school that ignorance is not a valid defense but it is for law schools. A few years ago, an attorney was sanctioned for mistakenly listing the value of his client's property on a bankruptcy pleading as $50,000.00 instead of $500,000.00. The attorney claimed he was off by a zero and that it was a clerical typo. The ethics committee did not buy it and suspended him for 6 months.

The lesson the lemmings should take from this entry is that you can lie, steal and cheat if you are a law school dean but once you become a lawyer and commit "innocent" mistakes, your license will be stripped from you faster than a law school can cash those student loan checks.

This is a dispicable industry. Here we have proof that the law schools lied. Yet they get a pass. The law schools' get away with fraud in the courts and the ABA turns a blind eye on these blatant ethical infractions. There is no justice appealing to the courts or the ABA. These institutions work hand in hand with one another to sustain the scam. The only way to stop these scammers is to educate the public, which is what this blog is doing.

Recently, I received a phone call from my alma mater asking me for money. My law school happens to be in the top 10 of law professor salaries in America. So I told the fundraiser who called me that when law school professors either match my donation or take a paycut that I will gladly match, I will open my wallet for a donation. The fundraiser hung up the phone because I suspect she knew hell has a better chance of freezing. Make no mistake, the law school industry is CRIMINAL but is protected under the guise and "legitmacy" of higher education which in turn is sanctioned by the government via the ABA and the availability of guaranteed student loans.

Lastly, for all you kids that BADLY want to be a lawyer (I suppose masochism is alive and well hundreds of years after Marqui DeSade), then I suggest going abroad and obtaining an LLB on the cheap in England or Germany and then come to a school like CUNY for one year to get an LLM and sit for the NY or CA bar. There is no sense in bankrupting yourself in order to enrich the filthy pigs who are operating this well oiled scam machine.

nando recently did an entry on a law school where a student who failed out shot and killed a dean, a professor and a fellow student. The school was new and it received full accreditation after the killings! If that doesn't tell you what these cocksuckers are about, nothing will.

I remember when Leona Helmsley once proclaimed: "Taxes are for the little people." I was too young to acknowledge then that she was right. Now, I know better.

If you or I made a mistake on our respective tax returns which led to under-reporting of income or exercising an improper tax deduction, the IRS will want their money back with retroactive interest and PENALTIES regardless of whether your act was "mistaken" or a result of an "oops." Where is the penalty for these schools engaged in massive fraud? Most of these law school deans are licensed lawyers. Why aren't they being brought before the ethics committees? Why do they get the benefit of prosecutorial immunity when a purse snatcher gets 7 years for stealing $10? These law school deans and professors are responsible for the illegal siphoning of taxpayer dollars for a worthless product that has been propped up generation after generation as being the "GOLDEN TICKET" to an upper middle class life. Yet like the greedy bankers that played with people's pensions in the phony derivatives market, the law schools can get away with murder. Where is the logic in this? Can a law school dean or a law professor reply to my post and tell me what justifies this kind of immoral and criminal behavior?

I never met a girl who makes me feel the way that you do(it's alright)Whenever I'm asked who makes my wet dreams real I say that you do (you're outta sight)So fee fi fo fum

Look out baby 'cause here I cum.

And I'm bringing you a love that's true so get readySo get ready I'm gonna try to eat your pussy too so get readySo get ready here I cum.My sperm is on its way.

If you wanna play hide and seek with my penis let me remind you(it's alright)The orgasms you're gonna miss and the time it takes to find you(it's outta sight)So fiddle-lee-dee fiddle-lee-dum

Look out baby 'cause here I cum.

And I'm bringing you a love that's true so get readySo get ready I'm gonna try to split your ass in two so get readySo get ready here I cum.I'm on my way.

All my friends shouldn't want me to I understand it(be alright)I hope I'll get to you before Uncle Rufus do the way I planned it(be outta sight)So twiddle-dee-dee twiddle dee dum

Look out baby 'cause here I cum.And I'm bringing you a love that's true so get readySo get ready I'm gonna bust a nut in you so get readySo get ready here I cum.I'm on my way.Get ready 'cause here I cum.Get ready 'cause here I cum.

Ok, let me get this straight. A lawyer can lose his license for mistakenly disbursing an attorney trust account check in his name but a law school dean faces no repercussion for lying and committing fraud? What a fucking racket. This is a criminal system that the mafia can only dream about.

Model rule 8.4 (c). I don't know if it has been actually passed in any jurisdiction. But a State bar could techinically disbar the lawyers responsible for releasing that information. I doubt that it would happen though.

Yep, I had the same reaction as Nando the moment I saw the headline. Before I even started to read the entry, I thought "I'll bet ALL of the mistakes made the debt look lower, rather than higher." The odds are 7-to-1 against that being random chance, by the way.

"Of the monstrous neglect of Higher Education in America, and the disregard of it as a means of forming good or bad citizens, and miserable or happy men and women, the law school cartel has, for the last twenty years, afforded a noteable example."

Law school academics and personnel are ignorant, sordid, and brutal people, to whom few considerate persons would have trusted the education of a horse or a dog.

As for absurdity and magnificent laissez-aller neglect, the criminal negligence of the baby bommer generation of key law school people has rarely been exceeded in the history of the world.

“John O'Brien, dean of the New England School of Law and chair of the ABA's legal accreditation committee, agreed the new schools are adding to a significant oversupply of lawyers. But the supply-demand imbalance is not a factor the ABA considers.

"It's not the ABA's job to police the number of law schools," O'Brien said. "Law schools are like other businesses. Ultimately, that's what they are. If there are people who feel there is a void that needs to be filled around the country, the process is to apply for ABA approval. If you meet those standards, you get approved."

Yes, the piece of trash known as John O’Brien told the Oregonian that law schools are businesses. We have known this for some time, but it is nice to see one of the perpetrators admit to this reality. For $ome rea$on, the law school pigs do not bill their “service” as a consumer item, however.

In fact, “higher education” in this country is simply another commodity. The “professors” and administrators don’t even pretend to train their students how to practice law. The rats prefer to think of themselves as teaching people how to “think critically” or to “think like a lawyer.” Yet, the bastards are happy to charge students $40K per year in annual tuition.

Imagine if AMA-approved medical schools or ADA-accredited dental schools did not teach their pupils how to practice!! Those students and the public would demand better. However, seeing that lawyer work is essentially based on wordplay – rather than actual skill, such as saving lives or performing emergency root canals – it is somehow fine for ABA trash pits to get away with this nonsense.

If these pigs want to pretend that they are businessmen, then they should go into the private sector – and lend their “talents” to the world of enterprise and capital. Of course, these academic blowhards couldn’t successfully run a hot dog cart on their own efforts.

Hell, Colby Nolan, the cat with an MBA purchased from diploma mill Trinity Southern University would have a better chance at operating such a business, even if it ended up eating much of the food. In fact, the cat would be able to relate to customers better than most “law professors” could.

“How do you get a merger done?” asks Scott B. Connolly, an attorney. There is silence from three well-dressed people in their early 20s, sitting at a conference table in a downtown building here last month.

“What steps would you need to take to accomplish a merger?” Mr. Connolly prods. After a pause, a participant gives it a shot: “You buy all the stock of one company. Is that what you need?”

“That’s a stock acquisition,” Mr. Connolly says. “The question is, when you close a merger, how does that deal get done?”

The answer — draft a certificate of merger and file it with the secretary of state — is part of a crash course in legal training. But the three people taking notes are not students. They are associates at a law firm called Drinker Biddle & Reath, hired to handle corporate transactions. And they have each spent three years and as much as $150,000 for a legal degree.

What they did not get, for all that time and money, was much practical training. Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful, with classes that are often overstuffed with antiquated distinctions, like the variety of property law in post-feudal England. Professors are rewarded for chin-stroking scholarship, like law review articles with titles like “A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise of Postmodern Legal Theory.”

Do you still want to attend law school, mentally-deficient lemming?!?! Are you one of those idiots who wants to “fight for social justice” – in this sick, corrupt world? Do you truly feel that your life will be meaningless if you are not an attorney? If so, then you need to be committed to a psychiatric ward – for your own well-being, as well as that of your friends and family.

If you have wanted to be a lawyer since you were five, then you have some serious issues. Most kids desire to be something that they perceive as worthwhile or noble – not become a slave with a white collar. (Unfortunately, this is what most will do when they hit adulthood. However, it is healthy for kids to have goals and dreams.) Lastly, if you have your little heart set on being an attorney, then don’t cry if you ignore the advice of this blog, judges, adjunct “law professors,” social commentators, et al. and you end up owing $180K in NON-DISCHARGEABLE student loans, coupled with pathetic job prospects!

"Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.

I have been practicing law for nearly two decades. The law schools have always massaged the numbers when it comes to salary statistics and employment numbers. In other words, the law schools have always misreported the numbers to keep the gravy locomotive running on the tracks. I recall that in the early '90s, the median salary was $80K. If you did not obtain a coveted $80K Biglaw job, the school implicitly told you that you did not work hard enough, did not network hard enough or something was individually wrong with you. The law schools were telling 1Ls at orientation that a law degree was a money printing press. A torts professor of mine was fond of saying that once we graduated law school, we had a license to steal.

What the torts professor left out was that the license to steal is perfected once you become a law school dean or professor. In my jurisdiction, young lawyers are being brought up before the ethics committee for minor infractions. For example, a local immigration practitioner was sanctioned for putting immigration filing fees in his operating account rather than in his trust account. Yet law school administrators can continue to defraud and scam generation after generation without any consequences? 20 years ago, and maybe even 10 years ago, kids could go into doc review, make $45/hr. and payoff $75K of student loans. When I read about law grads being saddled with $180K it is enough to make my head implode. It is clear that the law schools have gotten blindly greedy. They have accelerated their own demise because trust me, the current system cannot operate in perpetuity. Something has to give. I realize college grads want to double down on a useless liberal arts degree by enrolling in law school. Yet the opportunities are not there. I get on average 150 unsolicited resumes for a non-existent job at my firm. The legal profession is dying. Unless you have a niche practice, you will not survive hanging a shingle. Want to do real estate law? Ok, go compete with paralegal or title company attorneys that charge $500 per closing. Want to go into uncontested divorces or bankruptcies? Most court websites have pro se packets with instructions and forms. Want to do wills and estates? Staples sells a $20 Nolo programs that has a questionaire and produces a top notch will. Want to do immigration? Go compete with the local notarios that have inside connections with ICE.

I have no idea why anyone would want to go to law school in this economic climate. It is a recipe for financial and social disaster. Who wants to marry someone who is underemployed/unemployed owing $150K in student loans? I don't care if you have a 10" member or are a woman that can suck off the chrome from a trailer hitch, no sane person will want to marry into the debt, which will become "communal" once you tie the knot.

Want to buy a house or a lease a BMW? With that kind of leveraged liabilities, a section 8/welfare recipient has a better chance of buying a home or leasing a 5 series beamer. If you think a JD degree will impress employers, think again. My paper shredder does not jam up when JD resumes go through it.

One last observation I wish to impart with your readers. Established lawyers are reluctant to even mentor newly minted attorneys. Personally, I will never mentor a new lawyer unless they pay my hourly fee of $450. The last time I mentored a newbie, he tried stealing one of my clients by undercutting my hourly rate. The moron thought I had taught him everything but he only knew the tip of the iceberg. I hear this newbie has to sell financial products (insurance, IRA plans, etc.) to supplement his solo practice. Older lawyers will not help out new lawyers since it is a dog eat dog profession. This is the environment that awaits anyone who is willing to waste 3 years and $200K to attend law school today. I will write to you in the future about the collapse of the Biglaw hiring practices of they golden era. For now, that is all.

So true. I passed the bar a year ago. 75 resumes later.....NOT ONE DAMN INTERVIEW! I have made a GRAND TOTAL of $250 since LAST YEAR!

I am living on fast dwindling savings now and going solo is my last option. But if it doesn't pan out in the next few months, I'm moving on with a non-law job and I will just practice law for beer money on the side.

I think the point that 0Ls and law students need to unequivocably understand is that there is no recourse for them if the law schools fail to deliver on their fraudulent representations. Law professors and law school deans have nothing to lose in keeping the status quo. In fact, the system in its current setup is designed for the student to carry all the risk with minimal chance of any reward. The rewards all go to the law school and the student loan companies.

I predict that LSAC and the ABA will conspire to make the LSAT easier since the smarter college grads are staying away from law school (those that typically score in the 90th percentile on the LSAT). This way, law schools won't lose any ground on the "precious" USN&WR rankings while keeping the scam alive for years to come. I have already seen mentally slow attorneys operate so I expect to see a Downs Syndrome afflicted attorney any day now. This is a big business to partially quote John O'Brien. The student's interest is the least of the law schools' concern.

I was just wondering if judges realize legal education is a scam. It's easy to get stuck in a bubble when you're a judge too.

But don't these judges see incompetent attorneys and think to themselves 'This man (or woman) is licensed to practice law. And he can't even make an argument. He doesn't understand the law. What is going on?'

I mean, these guys went to law school too even if it was 30 years ago. They have to know the schools aren't preparing people to practice. On top of that, they keep jacking up tuition to ridiculous levels. Yeah, it's a business alright. One that is protected from the free market and where people can rake in serious cash by not producing anything of value to customers or society.

3:47 PM that is a great post from someone who obviously speaks from experience. The greed and corruption of the law schools is ruining this profession. The law school scam, like the subprime mortgage scam, cannot go on like this--it will implode sooner or later.

I don't do the internet dating thing, but do these services have a special category for people with massive student loans? It seems like such people would be more likely to accept each others' situation than someone who is financially healthy. Student loan indentured servants need companionship and sex and love just like the rest of us so maybe they should try to find each other.

These debt figures are misleading/fraudulent in another manner most don't realize, and I never realized until Campos recently noted this on his blog--the amounts actually are "amount borrowed" not "debt that must be repaid." The difference is that the amount borrowed is the dollar amount disbursed to the school. This does NOT include 1) Interest that accrues while you are in school; 2) Interest that accrues after you graduate but are studying for the bar; 3) Loan origination fees; 4) Loans taken out to pay living expenses while studying for the bar exam. yet all of these expenses will be added to one's debt load.

Would any bank lend $40K to an 18 year old with no credit, shit for collateral and little work history, if the loans weren't guaranteed by the government?

This is the head of the snake, people. You need to reinstate BK protections for student borrowers before you can win this battle. Only when the banks bear some of the risk of providing loans will anything change.

Then let the cries of racism follow from all those who despise Capitalism. No loans would ever get made especially to blacks or hispanics and they would end up going to school on the white mans nickel whlie more white kids dont go to school because they cant get loans and have no minority whining optioms. The end result will be no middle class and too many people with with degrees that took their time fijishing school.

Its bad now but idiots like painter who want others to correct their mistakes are going to take this country furrther down the road of everyone owes me something a lot faster.

751..wake the f up. While there certainly needs to be some changes as to who can file bankruptcy, the solution is not giving students a free pass on loans. The corrections need to be reducing who can file bankruptcy, not just allowing everyone. I guess you dont care who pays for it if you are getting the free shit. Might as well go on welfare too dummy as there is just endless amounts of tax money to pay for your decisions.

Imagine if we all at age 18 just took out loans for worthless degrees like basketweaving and law which included living expenses and we basically spent our twenties going to school and living and playing xbox with no worries. Then at 30, we say shit, I cant find a job despite so many degrees that Im going to file bankruptucy and start over. What do you think would happen with the economics of this country.

So if you allow this, then banks wont make loans and all the minorities will sue for discrimination and the result will be free school for them as banks are forced to make loans to minorities or schools give scholarships to them you know like they were with mortgages to minorities thanks to Bill Clinton. How did that turn out?

Ultimately its the working folks who pay for these minority leeches to go to school while their kids cant go unless they cosign for their kids loans or else these kids all go to community college. The rich wont be effected as their kids will keep going to the private schools and big universities and under your plan these rich idiots will get into schools they couldnt get into earlier when good students from avg backgrounds who get in cant get the loans to go. Destroy the middle class when you cant keep up. I get it.

We all agree school is a rip off in law and many others but now why not make people educate themselves about the scam and not go. This blog helps that and if you still go with all this info out here, then you deserve what you get. People take risks and some make it and some dont but the minute you start forgiving student loans, whats left of the middle class will be destroyed and we will become a country of people just looking for handouts in one form or another. That is not the USA I know.

Plastics surgeons in Mexico should advertise on Nando's blog that if anybody wants to change their identity and avoid paying these monstrous student loans, they can visit a clinic in Mexico. Similar to when the drug dealers in the movie "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" used the plastic surgeons to start a new identity. I am sure there will be a line of law school grads outside the clinic.

I well remember the 5 or 6 years leading up to the bursting of the real estate/housing bubble here on Long Island.

The local town halls were jammed with applications for building and rennovation permits.

Everywhere one looked there were homes being built, and a lot of McMansions.

Dirt was being pushed around, and one saw cleared lots everywhere, and basement foundations being poured and wood frames going up almost overnight.

Dumpsters everywhere and port a john's for the workers.

That was Eastern Long Island, and I used to marvel at how jammed the highways of South fork of Long Island (The Manhattan bedroom community known as "The Hamptons") was with large trucks towing trailers with earth moving equipment, such as bulldozers and backhoes.

And there were building supply delivery trucks, cement trucks, pickups, vans, and all sorts of tradespeople known to the locals as the "Trade parade" that made traffic crawl early in the morning.

Undocumented workers on many a street corner looking for work as well with their innumberable bicycles locked to chain link fences around say, a public school.

Today, when I revisit those old haunts an drive around, there are very few construction sites to see. Very few cleared lots. Few dumpsters. No port a john's sitting in two's or threes.

The McMansions that were built close to 10 years ago or even less are looking somewhat shabby, and some have never sold, and are listed for a lot less money on a dilapidated sign out front. The town hall workers are back to their usual slow plod.

Some planned developments never did sell off all the parcels, and so one or two model homes sit forlornely on large, cleared tracts of land overgrown by weeds that used to be either farm fields or wooded areas.

And so the moral of all of this is that during the pre real estate bubble building boom I thought things would go on forever as they were, and that Henry David Thoreau would forever spin in his grave as real estate values would keep going up and up, and speculators would keep on flippin'.

During that time, I cannot recall ever hearing much talk about a coming crash, but a crash did come around 2008.

And maybe the same sort of thing will happen with student lending, and all the kids in the neighborhood that went to law school and are working at Starbucks or not working at all will see their loans settled or forgiven.

And maybe what all seems so permanent now will not be so in time and government SL lending will become limited, and tuition will have to come down, and many law schools will indeed be shuttered or have to significantly curtail enrollment and....well....you get what I am driving at.

Wandered into this blog while doing some research on tort reform. The actions of the ABA are unbecoming of a professional society. It seems as though lawyers want to regulate everyone's profession but their own. The other day I got an email informing me that I had (unbeknownst to me) participated in a class action suit against Netflix totalling $9,000,000 for which the customers received exactly $0. This is what a once prestigious profession has devolved into - looters and scammers that don't actually produce anything of value just skim off the productivity of others. I'm afraid its only going to get worse as law schools have been churning out armies of broke lawyers thirsty for blood. Why anyone would want to go into this profession is beyond me. I couldnt imagine having to argue with people all day. I truly feel sorry for so many of my peers who fell for this scam. There are so many careers out there in need of bright young motivated people. Why no go into an allied health profession? That sector is booming. There are so many respectable, lucrative careers in health care that dont involve going to med school. Medical technologist, nursing, OT, PA, dietitian, respiratory therapist, dental hygienist etc... But still, people seem to happily line up to get ass raped by law school.

If I could do it over again, I would have gone into pharmaceutical sales. I see plenty of these men and women with nice cars and fat salaries. And the thing is many of these people only have a BA and confidence. They get to travel all expenses paid, and take med students and doctors to fancy dinners and golf outings.

These men and women are usually tanned and trim. Appearance goes a long way in that field. If you were pulling down $90K with hardly any student loans, you could afford to spend 2-3 hours a day in the gym too. As a broke attorney, I can't even afford a gym membership. People slam Pharma, and for good reason. But at least these motherfuckers are open about their motive: money. And you do see these companies provide community service and assign employees to help with filling sandbags, donating food, cleaning up landfills. Do you see law firms doing that shit?

On August 9, 2012, ATL's Staci Zaretsky posted an entry labeled "Law Schools Misreport Debt Figures to the ABA; To No One’s Shock, the ABA Does Nothing." Here is a solid excerpt:

"It seems that several law schools have made the “honest mistake” of reporting only one year of indebtedness to the ABA, instead of the indebtedness that students graduate with after three years of schooling. If law school administrators had even a modicum of common sense, then they would have realized their error before misreporting the data to the ABA, which in turn reported the inaccuracies to U.S. News for publication."

Those with an IQ above 85 - and some knowledge of the law school industrial complex - KNOW that these bastards did not unintentionally misreport their data. If the law school pigs were this incompetent, then they wouldn't be operating this scam.

Zaretsky's article continued:

"Now that changes to Standard 509 are in place at the ABA — changes that bar law schools from publishing misleading consumer information — you’d think that the ABA would do something about these violations. The WSJ Law Blog has the scoop on the ABA’s intentions:

An ABA spokesman confirmed that a number of law schools had contacted the organization about inaccuracies with their average indebtedness figures, but he declined to comment on specifics. The ABA, he said, has made no determination of intentional misreporting on debt figures.

“We will admit that the requests that we make can sometimes be interpreted in various ways,” the spokesman for the ABA. “Because of that complexity, that’s why we are okay with schools contacting us and allowing them to revise.”

Holy crap, there’s no linguistic complexity here, period. No one cares how much debt a student takes on for one year of law school, because in the grand scheme of things, that figure means absolutely nothing. But once again, the ABA has shown that it hasn’t got any teeth with it comes to sanctioning law schools for their misdeeds. In fact, the ABA spokesman who spoke to the WSJ Law Blog went on to say that schools would only be sanctioned if there were “persistent and substantial misrepresentations in consumer data.”

You can tell that these "educators" only care about money - so that they can maintain their upper middle class lifestyle. If someone offered to pay each of these cockroaches $300K per year - to extol the health benefits of putting battery acid in baby bottles - many of these academic sociopaths would jump at the opportunity.

The Class of 2013 (and every class hereafter) is the FIRST class that I, and others should, REFUSE to have any sympathy for. Here's why:

The Class of 2010 gets a free sympathy pass: The negative law school media attention had not yet begun, even if the signs were there. They just didn't know any better.

The Class of 2011 also gets a sympathy pass, but with a skeptical stare. The negative law school attention did not truly gain traction until the Class of 2011 was already well into their 1L year, or possibly completed 1L year. The Class of 2011 could have also pulled out after the 1L year, but you finish what you start, right? Also, the negative law school attention was fairly new and even if information spreads quickly, the info can still take a while to sink in.

The Class of 2012 should not get ANY sympathy because by this point, the proverbial law school cat was out of the bag by 2009. However, the fraud was so large, it was hard to believe. The cognitive dissonance can make true information seem fuzzy. Furthermore, 2012 matriculants did not have the benefit of the David Segal WSJ article published in Jan 2011 "Is Law School a Losing Game?" Although, the Class of 2012 should have known better, the blogs had not yet been given credibility. The Class of 2012 gets a pass, and a teaspoon of sympathy.

Class of 2013 knows or should know the score. It also appears they do, considering that applications are off 25%. I have no more sympathy for the Class of 2013. Buyer beware for you guys.

Objective

This blog is maintained by a graduate of a third tier law school. My goal is to educate prospective law students about the perils of obtaining a legal education. There are many pitfalls - the debt load, the oversupply of lawyers, the fact that there are not enough legal jobs to satisfy nearly 45,000 annual law graduates, and the reality that the majority of law school graduates will end up with low-paying jobs upon completion of their "legal studies."